As part of the Tamil Film Festival that was inaugurated on the second day of HLF, a panel discussion on ‘meaningful cinema’ was held. “Hyderabad traffic” made the audience wait eagerly, as the panelists Prakash Raj and Nandini Reddy walked in 30 minutes late. But once there, it was a treat. For Nandini, meaningful cinema comes through literature. “There is no literary base to Telugu cinema these days. I am disappointed that young filmmakers these days watch a lot of movies, but don’t read enough. Earlier, literature inspired beautiful cinema but now when I ask young filmmakers if they read, they look at me, as if to say, ‘Should I really be reading a book?’
Interesting questions were asked by the audience, and one of them was about why non-commercial films don’t reach enough people. Prakash Raj answered, “Youngsters are getting the wrong message that if you do these kind of films, you won’t have any money. That is not entirely true,” he said and Nandini Reddy added, “Meaningful cinema, to me, is when a song or a message from the film stays on in your heart, even after you walk out of the theatre.”
